Capella in the context of Stellar corona

In Greek mythology, Amalthea or Amaltheia (Ancient Greek: Ἀμάλθεια) is the figure most commonly identified as the nurse of Zeus during his infancy. She is described either as a nymph who raises the child on the milk of a goat, or, in some accounts from the Hellenistic period onwards, as the goat itself.

As early as the archaic period, there exist references to the "horn of Amalthea" (known in Latin as the cornucopia), a magical horn said to be capable of producing endless amounts of any food or drink desired. In a narrative attributed to the mythical poet Musaeus, and likely dating to the 4th century BC or earlier, Amalthea, a nymph, nurses the infant Zeus and owns a goat which is terrifying in appearance. After Zeus reaches adulthood, he uses the goat's skin as a weapon in his battle against the Titans. Amalthea is first described as a goat by the 3rd-century BC poet Callimachus, who presents a rationalised version of the myth, in which Zeus is fed on Amalthea's milk. Aratus, also writing in the 3rd century BC, identifies Amalthea with the star Capella, and describes her as "Olenian" (the meaning of which is unclear).

The Winter Hexagon is an asterism appearing to be in the form of a hexagon with vertices at Rigel, Aldebaran, Capella, Pollux, Procyon, and Sirius. It is mostly upon the Northern Hemisphere's celestial sphere. On most locations on Earth (except the South Island of New Zealand and the south of Chile and Argentina and further south), this asterism is visible in the evening sky at the equator from approximately December to June, and in the morning sky from July to the end of November, while in the evenings on the northern hemisphere it is less months visible between December and June, and on the southern hemisphere less months between July and November. In the tropics and southern hemisphere, this (then called "summer hexagon") can be extended with the bright star Canopus in the south.

Smaller and more regularly shaped is the Winter Triangle, an approximately equilateral triangle that shares two vertices (Sirius and Procyon) with the larger asterism. The third vertex is Betelgeuse, which lies near the center of the hexagon. These three stars are three of the ten brightest objects, as viewed from Earth, outside the Solar System. Betelgeuse is also particularly easy to locate, being a shoulder of Orion, which assists stargazers in finding the triangle. Once the triangle is located, the larger hexagon may then be found.